Tim Worstall

And quite rightly too. A senior immigration judge said yesterday that Qatada could be released despite even his own defence team suggesting that he posed a “grave risk” to Britain’s national security. ‘Coz there’s rules, see? We get to jail you if we’ve tried you and found you guilty of a crime: something that was [...]

[Read more →]

The corporation had said there was an overwhelming case for the court’s intervention because of the impact on the churchyard of the camp. The limited interference with the protesters’ rights entailed in the removal of the tents was justified and proportionate, given the rights and freedoms of others, it argued. There’s a trade off of [...]

[Read more →]

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said juries should be allowed to consider the fact a victim had been unfaithful as a possible provocation – in defiance of a new law that banned it as an excuse. How did we end up with a law that said that such infidelity could not be used as [...]

[Read more →]

No, not because I’m some scumbag racist, no, not because it’s a bad idea that murderers go to jail. Rather, this: But in 2005 a chink of light emerged when the double jeopardy rule was abolished, meaning the men could be re-tried. Double jeopardy is one of our protections against them. Us as citizens against [...]

[Read more →]

Seven years after a statutory instrument updating nature regulations glided virtually unobserved through Westminster, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has this week admitted it “unlawfully” put a new crime on the statute books. The unintended outcome of the rarely deployed Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 Amendment Regulations, Statutory Instrument (SI) 1487/2004, [...]

[Read more →]

The Trust points out that the existing document emphasises economic growth as a major driver for development. Although it mentions open spaces, sport and leisure as important factors to consider there is no mention of culture or the arts. In a response to the Minister’s current plans it said: “An arts facility (for example, one [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve forgotten. Stanford first began complaining of “extensive retrograde amnesia” from the jailhouse attack sometime after he arrived at Butner in February, according to the prosecutors’ filing. “Stanford has recently repeatedly claimed being ‘completely amnestic to his life prior to the assault, stating that 59 years were stolen,’” Costa said in the filing, citing the [...]

[Read more →]

There’s something of a problem with this EAW you see: In another case, Andrew Symeou was extradited to Greece in July 2009 to face charges in connection with the death of a young man on a Greek island. He spent a year in custody before being granted bail but could not leave Greece. He was [...]

[Read more →]

But perhaps the biggest sin of the lot was effectively to render all credit default swaps (a form of insurance against default) on sovereign debt essentially worthless, or void, by making the Greek default “voluntary”. This has made it impossible to hedge against eurozone sovereign debt purchases, and thereby destroyed the market. Worse, it’s made [...]

[Read more →]

The courts were flexing their political muscles again last week – as they seem to every week. First, a High Court judge ruled that Sefton Council could not legally freeze the fees it pays private companies to look after old people needing care. Then, on Friday, the same court ruled that the Isle of Wight [...]

[Read more →]

A long term reader sends me a piece from the NYT which includes this line: ClientEarth, a nonprofit law firm with offices in Brussels, Law firms are partnerships: in the technical sense there is no profit, ever. Just incomes for the partners. Who would like to bet that as ClientEarth gets more business, the partners [...]

[Read more →]

The Brighton UK Uncut peeps are in court at present. Something to do with superglueing themselves to hte windows of TopShop I think. Our favourite retired accountant gave evidence for the defence yesterday and Caroline Lucas is doing so today. So, onto something I don’t know. Is it possible to find out what evidence they [...]

[Read more →]

Hey, go for it folks. But those who wanted football to carry on here acted admirably quickly, and launched the new Chester FC as a “phoenix club”. Crucially, it’s a mutual: owned by its supporters, who can pay a minimum of £5 a season to become active shareholders. And it is not alone: the night [...]

[Read more →]

“I thee with my dosh endow” seems to be slightly going by the wayside doesn’t it? A wife is not entitled to a £7 million share of her husband’s £24 million fortune after 25 years of marriage because he inherited it from his father, a divorce judge has ruled. I seem to remember that Scottish [...]

[Read more →]

Which side will win in the end I’ve no idea but I don’t think much of the arguments being pout forward by one side: The 11th Circuit decision, penned by Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull, found that “the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power.” “What Congress [...]

[Read more →]

Government sources said options for change include increasing magistrates’ powers to jail offenders. Under current rules, magistrates can jail offenders for a maximum of six months. That could double to a year, sources said. What scum they are. If you want to take away someone’s liberty for more than 6 months then have the cojones [...]

[Read more →]

He said: “We need to do more to improve the supply side of the economy. This means taking on difficult vested interests.” But of course it’s not just the unions and the planning system that need that reform. The whole damn system of regulation needs to be shaken up. Just as an example, it is [...]

[Read more →]

Just Thinking makes an interesting point. Few to none have been charged with riot: as I’ve been saying, this might well mean that there wasn’t in fact a riot and thus the rozzers not having to pay for the damage caused in those not riots. What slightly worries me is that Frank Dobson thinks this [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve posted this before yet asinine MSM reporters continue to make statements on air such as ‘leaving businesses with a big bill’. So any journalists reading please pay close attention. Look at your insurance policy; go the exclusions and find the word that occurs between ‘radioactivity’ and ‘terrorism’. Yep. Riot. All that damage – if [...]

[Read more →]

As has been pointed out, those of us who don’t trust the State to run libraries aren’t really the poster children for the idea that the State will successfully identify those who should be killed. But this argument ends up in stupidity: It is a similar picture for cop killers, the public understands that the [...]

[Read more →]